Designline

The lithium titanate batteries by Altairnano has been tried in powerstations, trucks and even a dragster and will soon have the opportunity to prove their metal in a hybrid bus application. The company has announced that they have received an order for four demo battery packs by the innovative bus maker Designline International, who will shell out a hefty $540,000 for this initial order. While one of the 44 KWh packs will be used for modular testing, the other three will be installed in Ecosaver

There's nothing like a real-life introduction to get the love sparks flying. Helen Clark, Prime Minister of New Zealand happened to be in Japan the other day when she was invited to take a ride in the all-electric i MiEV from Mitsubishi. She found the ride through the Tokyo streets "smooth" and thought it was the perfect automotive solution for her own island country. "If they can get it into mass production and get the price down this would be an incredibly popular urban car," she said. She com

There seems to be tons of innovative technologies being proposed, tried and tested these days. Some of the wilder ideas disappear quickly while others, which were thought to have gone extinct, make a dramatic comeback. One such cool tech is the automotive turbine.

While spending the wee hours trying to dig up more information on a deal reported in The Earth News between micro-turbine maker Capstone and Italian bus builder Eco Power Technology, I came across an unexpected bit of news. According to a post by nbodyhome on Disney fan forum Micechat, a Designline bus has been doing some testing down at the home of the famous rodent in Orlando. Designline is the New Zealand manufacturer behind the solar powered Tindo bus and uses a Capstone micro-turbine in its

digg_url =
'http://digg.com/autos/Solar_powered_bus_makes_its_debut';
Where might you go if you were the world's first solar-powered electric bus? Somehow, the Adelaide City Council has convinced Tindo, which is that bus, to make Adelaide, Australia its home. Not only is the bus powered 100 percent by solar energy (from a BP Solar-sourced photovoltaic station), but people can also ride it for free. The bus has room for 42 passengers.

Designline, a New Zealand coach building company known for its hybrid buses, is building a prototype commuter bus powered by a unique fuel cell, developed in collaboration with NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab and Cal Tech. The fuel cell, produced by U.S. based Alchemy Enterprises Ltd, uses magnesium as its catalyst material for a chemical reaction that generates electricity. Metal-air fuel cells (MAFC) use metal and oxygen to generate electricity. The more common PEM (Proton-Exchange Membrane) fuel ce